Page 4 of Lake of Sin

It seemed to be waiting. I didn’t know what to do. Cautiously, I stretched my head back, trying to see the others in the frozen tableau I stumbled upon, but the world was upside down. I flung myself back up and asked, “Marquis?”

Its expression changed minutely. Its eyes narrowed. Such a human display, I almost forgot what was holding me. The beast leaned forward and inhaled so hard its nostrils flared wide, and then it scrunched its features up into horrified disgust. Very gently, it put me down.

We all stood there in silence. Then, the two giants whose tournament I’d interrupted paced away from the centre of the arena, but not before one kicked three times, dragging its foot over the ground.

I walked forward and saw that it had disturbed the dust, and beneath that lay the sigil.

And I wentto my knees before it.

All the demons watched me and said nothing. I had no weapon with which to open my veins, and so I raised my hands like I was begging for an offering. The two giants exchanged a long look. The lion-head moved first. It reached for the sword at its scabbard and removed it with a sharpschling!of a sound, and carefully pointed the tip of the blade towards my palm. I did not shiver nor shake, even when anticipatory nausea started up. The blade pressed like a fat pin into the palm of my hand, and wet runnels of blood welled up and seeped through the grooves in my palm. I cupped my proffered blood and brought it down to the sigil, and after I let the blood run into every nook and cranny, I cupped my bloody hand around my limp cock for good measure, to reconfirm my body as part of the rite.

A growl started up from the armoury. I looked up in time with dozens of heads to see black smog crawling from the shadowy room. The imps began to whisper and giggle and whine, and the cherubim blasted one final note on their trumpets, a sound that heralded new arrival and ended the festivities all at once. They fled quickly, the four of them peeling off with squeals and layered cries echoing from their four heads and shared throat. When they were gone, the giants stomped away, each of them flanking the sigil where I still knelt.

I returned to the shadow, craning to see.

A bloody, rough-pelted wolf sprinted from the centre of the darkness. Two great wings were folded against its back, the grey feathers lifting from the speed of its approach. A serpent tail whipped furiously in the air, and the panting of the wolf became the only sound. A metre from the sigil, the beast skidded to a halt. Thick saliva dripped from its yellowed teeth. It panted laboriously, and even from a distance, I could smell its rankness; a dense smell, like old fish and something septic. I gagged.

“Are you the Marquis of this kingdom of Hell?” I whispered.

The wolf opened its mouth, and something spewed forth: flame or light—something so bright I could hardly bear to stare at it. The sound, like rushing water or an all-consuming fire, persisted on and on without end. I forced myself to look, to really peer into the brightness. The light warbled, rippling with movement. And I heard the name whispered from the wolf’s throat, edging out of its jaw, and then echoed in susurrus voices:

MARCHOSIAS.

I understood, and yet couldn’t comprehend. Marquis Marchosias was not the wolf, but the thing spewing forth from its open mouth. Intangible flame, ungraspable light: I had no pleasure at the sight of it and couldn’t think of what I might do to it.

With my nerves still bludgeoned, I said, “I am sent by Lord Asmodeus Itself. Stand before me as a man!”

Marchosias, or the wolf carrying its spirit, let out a strangled cry. The flame still burned, and I thought I could see two eyes gleaming at me from the rippling white light.

A voice like a deep scrape hissed, “YOU WISH TO SPEAK WITH ME?”

I pushed off the ground and bowed my head. “I do.”

Then, “YOU ARE HUMAN.”

I told it as I told many of the demons I had serviced: “I have relinquished all mortal rights. I have betrayed my honourable self for this life. Lord Asmodeus wishes me to prove myself to it. Come before me as a man so we may speak more properly.”

I could not tell you where my fear went. Abruptly, the wolf shut its jaw, and a great hacking and writhing began in its body. When it next heaved, a wet, slick-covered ball of a figure emerged wetly from its mouth and landed in the dust, sending sand into the air. The saliva-coated limbs unfurled from its foetal position and rapidly grew into a man until it was the size of the other giants in the arena.

The wolf—deflated. As if all the nutrients in its body had evaporated, it became nothing more than an empty skin, a pelt collapsing onto the stone.

Marchosias had not heeded my exact request. Though its body resembled a human man, too much was inhuman. Its head remained wolfish. It appeared messy, the fur thick and knotted around the neck, and as if its head had bloomed suddenly from a wound rather than a creature born this way. I half expected to see puckering sutures around the neck, but no such thing existed. Its shoulders were broad, and its chest very hairy. At times, I was certain the human hair gave way to a pelt. Its feet were that of a wolf’s, too, and those two grey wings were neatly overlapping at its back.

What frightened me most was its cock, which wasn’t a cock at all, but the new source of Marchosias’ infernal, intangible light.

I panted hard, backing away from Marchosias. The demon stomped forward out of the circle; there was no point in running. I could have sprinted, and it would have caught me in seconds. I looked up in time to watch its arm swing through the air, hand slamming into my waist. I gasped, let out a shuddery sob as it lifted me from the ground, and like the other giant before it, the Marquis held me aloft to inspect me.

“CONTINUE,” it ordered loudly, clomping to the right. My head spun as I bounced through the air. With a wave of its fingers, a bright light appeared in the fort, and a new section materialised: a tremendous throne positioned three stairs in the air, at the height the cherubim had been lurking at. Sounds started up beneath us as it climbed, and by the time Marchosias was seated, the tournament had recommenced below us.

But I was hardly concerned by the battle between lesser demons. Marchosias lowered me onto its thigh. I straddled it, legs slipping either side of the warm trunk of a leg. To my right, the light from its nethers blinded me, and so I scooted back andcraned up at the demon—who resolutely didn’t look my way. It was completely transfixed by the events happening below.

I swallowed and asked, “Will you speak to me?”

“At some point.”

“I need to pleasure you. Or you may pleasure me. But it is necessary to proceed.”

“Is this some kind of punishment?”

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